10,000 Birds

JULY 18, 2021

The best of summer birding in my experience takes place at the beach. Our land-locked species in temperate zones tend to become too focused on the little details of perpetuating their species to be sufficiently entertaining. Out on the shore, though, a whole suite of species exists in the places we gravitate to anyway.

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Virginia Birds Experience Experiments 257

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 26, 2024

Sadly, the HBW states that the species is “almost extinct in some areas in China owing to hunting and trapping for the cagebird trade and taxidermy” The Maroon Oriole looks much more interesting, though my photos do not really do it full justice. ” Contribution to the vibrant bird community. A bad one, admittedly.

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Nepal Birds Owls Fish 172

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 18, 2021

10,000 Birds is running a series of articles by and about tour guides, tour companies, eco-lodges, and other birding travel organizations. We want to help the birding tourism industry come back strong from the COVID pandemic. We work hard to provide the richest and most rewarding experience of the Neotropics.

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Guatemala El Salvador Belize Honduras 256

10,000 Birds

MAY 3, 2024

This is not a birding trip; we are trying to deal with many logistical life issues that have accumulated over the past several years. But will I bird? My only other experience with an Audubon Club field trip anywhere, on a cold October morning in the American Midwest, was frankly kind of a bust. Of course I will!

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San Francisco California Woodpeckers Experience 218

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 13, 2021

Not only do we see dramatic changes in both light and weather during the last weeks of the year, but our schedules also experience substantial imbalances of work, play, and rest. I traveled to Atlantic City for a professional conference this weekend, which put me in place to see species we’re not getting anymore up north.

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Birds Experience Experiments Sparrows 219

10,000 Birds

MAY 24, 2024

In my younger days I was very keen on what is generally known as Big Day Birding, or trying to see as many species of birds as possible in one day. Called The Big Bird Race , it tells the story of how my team, representing Country Life magazine , recorded 155 species in 24 hours in East Anglia (Suffolk and Norfolk).

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Birds Kenya Barn Owls Owls 130

10,000 Birds

JUNE 1, 2023

As such, it offers some unique birding experiences. Even better, I happen to have an online birding buddy who offered to make space that Wednesday and Friday to take me to see some of Tabasco’s birds. By week’s end I had 30 new species on my life list. Good choice! 500 down, 600 to go.

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Mexico Tigers Birds Cows 130

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 11, 2023

I did not actually go to Afghanistan for birding. So, birds in Kabul. I am only including them in this post to give you my real-life Kabul experience … Four species are the most easily seen in the few urban parks (into which women are not actually allowed to enter – I am not sure about female birds).

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Afghanistan Birds Feral Zoos 184

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 11, 2023

How can one, in what is barely the second week of the first month of the year – even think of suggesting a Bird of the Year? I began recording my bird sightings with photographs in late 2009, and since then I have seen (or at least heard) a fair proportion of species recorded within my home country of Trinidad & Tobago.

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Birds Trinidad 2020 2012 264

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

10,000 Birds is running a series of articles by and about tour guides, tour companies, eco-lodges, and other birding travel organizations. We want to help the birding tourism industry come back strong from the COVID pandemic. Mercedes Rivadeneira has been in the birding tourism and nature conservation business for over 30 years!

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Ecuador Birds 2019 Cattle 263

10,000 Birds

JUNE 29, 2023

The (Big) Year that Flew By: Twelve Months, Six Continents, and the Ultimate Birding Record – which is the book’s full title, or Arjan Dwarshuis’s Big Year, as I prefer to call it shortly, is a highly anticipated and a long awaited travelogue of the author’s 2016 race against time across 40 countries in his attempt to break the world birding record.

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Papua New Guinea Guinea Suriname South America 258

10,000 Birds

JUNE 8, 2019

Growing up birding in Western New York was also a time when the old woods of the Niagara Gorge were punctuated with the songs of hidden Red-eyed and Warbling Vireos and the lazy notes of Eastern Wood-Pewees. Thanks to guiding, I have identified around 620 species six months into the year and Mary has a list of more than 530.

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Costa Rica Species Birds New York 202

10,000 Birds

APRIL 11, 2023

Indeed, even though I just celebrated 40 years of living in Mexico, we have never been to Cabo San Lucas, and our only experience with Cancún was going though immigration in that city’s airport. If we were more enthusiastic beach-goers, I would probably have many more tropical birds on my life list by now.

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Birds Mexico Turkey Species 252

10,000 Birds

MAY 18, 2020

May delivers one of those amazing times of the year when we’re too busy looking at birds to sit around talking about them. A weekend that included well north of a hundred species is a difficult weekend for which to decide what is the Best Bird of the Weekend and Corey had that enviable task this weekend. How about you?

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2020 Jamaica New York Birds 353

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 29, 2023

On Tuesday my closest birding buddies, and, of late, my regular companions, wanted to go down to Paso Ancho. This did not seem like a problem to me, because a bit of rain really seems to bring out the birds in such a dry habitat. The post I’m Birding in the Rain, Just Birding in the Rain first appeared on 10,000 Birds.

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Birds Mexico Shelters Species 168

10,000 Birds

JUNE 13, 2021

The bird is just chilling out, waiting for the urge to fly. The bird below is also waiting, but not to fly. One might assume this is a falconry bird, but it’s not. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of birds knows the efficiency and delicacy of their respiratory systems. Now imagine you have the lungs of a bird.

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Wildlife Rehabilitation Tethering Giraffes Alabama 264

10,000 Birds

MAY 4, 2021

Louisiana is a magical place to bird. At the same time I was ogling Scissor-tailed Flycatchers and Upland Sandpipers, Marybeth Lima was also birding Louisiana. Chapter Two is a potpourri of stories about nemesis birds, birding by ear, birding for science, under the rubric of birding ‘for the love of it.’

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Louisiana Species Mississippi Alabama 264

10,000 Birds

OCTOBER 25, 2021

October is on the wane, but the birds just keep coming. I wasn’t really where any uncommon birds were this weekend, but I’m never far from very vocal Northern Cardinals , which is a good thing. Of the two, he chose the latter as his Best Bird of the Weekend, simply because he got a better photo of it. How about you?

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Sparrows Birds Experience Experiments 252

10,000 Birds

JANUARY 5, 2024

Well, 2023 has ended, so it’s time to look back at the past year’s birding. The pleasures of birding are many and varied, so this kind of post always involves a list. I will also return to several birds which have already appeared here. But Morocco’s example is by far the “housiest” of them all.

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Morocco Birds Turkey Mexico 184

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 2, 2021

The same analogy applies to bird sightings, but here we are, so let’s hear what you saw this weekend! Corey went out onto the East Pond at Jamaica Bay both mornings this weekend and saw bunches of great birds. What was your best bird of the weekend? What was your best bird of the weekend? How about you?

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Jamaica Birds Experience Experiments 262

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 26, 2021

I finally tracked down Black-bellied Plover , a shorebird species that had been eluding me for the county for years, plus a bonus bird in the form of a very infrequent Forster’s Tern hobnobbing with the usual Caspians. Corey got out looking for birds a whole bunch this weekend. What was your best bird of the weekend?

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Bears Birds Experience Experiments 233

10,000 Birds

APRIL 28, 2024

There are a few spectacles in the birding community that are high energy, happen quickly, and is worth any effort to experience it. One such experience is a bird grounding event, sometimes called a fallout. However, if the wind blows in from the north, then these poor little birds have much more of a struggle.

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Texas Alabama Alligators Nashville 221

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

To every bird, though, mid-September remains what it’s always been: a good time to feed, mass, and move ! Corey enjoyed his outing with me on Saturday and his coastal birding with his pal Mary on Sunday. Over twenty species of wood-warbler, a variety of shorebirds, and host of birds in general will make for some fun fall birding.

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2020 Birds Humane Experience 305

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 22, 2023

Guyana’s capital city of Georgetown, a quaint, sprawling network of roads and waterways is a regulated introduction to the country’s 800+ species of birds. Bird number one in a new country, and fittingly, a lifer for me. Lesser Kiskadee A pair of very similar looking birds flew in to confuse things even more.

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Guyana Parrots Birds South America 204

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 29, 2024

I truly do hope I am not tiring 10,000 Birds’ readers too much with my obsession with Michoacán’s ongoing drought, the disappearance of Lake Cuitzeo (Mexico’s 2nd largest lake, in normal years), and our own micro-endemic Black-polled Yellowthroat. But obsessed I am. Had I thrown a rock, I would undoubtedly have hit one.

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Mexico Investigation Science Experience 229

10,000 Birds

AUGUST 22, 2021

As August comes rushing to a close, the doldrums of the last few weeks have already started to give way to a new mass movement of birds. Not only did I pick up that little brown job, but I found plenty more species that looked verrrry much like it. What was your best bird of the weekend? Move with them! Good times!

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California New York Birds Experience 264

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

10,000 Birds is running a series of articles by and about tour guides, tour companies, eco-lodges, and other birding travel organizations. We want to help the birding tourism industry come back strong from the COVID pandemic. My name is Kalu Afasi, I am a birding guide from Ghana, a country in West Africa.

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Ghana Africa Birds Industry 238

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Birds of Belize by Steve N. Howell and Dale Dyer and Birds of Costa Rica by Dale Dyer and Steve N. An associated issue is that the Belize and Costa Rica guides share many of the same descriptions of species, written by Howell. Two books, two authors, two countries bursting with neotropical avian diversity. © 2023 by Steve N.

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Costa Rica Belize El Salvador Birds 227

10,000 Birds

MAY 10, 2021

May is a time for birding. We have the slow weeks and months for reading, writing, and dreaming about the birds we’d rather be seeing. Corey enjoyed getting out early and birding both days this weekend, and has the lists to back him up. After that, what else could be his Best Bird of the Weekend? How about you?

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New York Sparrows Birds Breeding 262

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 2, 2021

Collins Birds of the World is “ a must for the travelling birder ,” as the BBC Wildlife Magazine reviewer has put it. When I moved to Botswana, to learn my birds I got myself the thickest local field guide. It is not a concept for a total beginner, more of a reminder to someone with some experience. And I cannot agree more.

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Birds Botswana Africa Ecuador 255

10,000 Birds

MAY 23, 2023

I recently asked ChatGPT some questions about the best birding locations in the United States and the results were decidedly mixed. Here are the queries and the ChatGPT responses are below: What is birding? What is a “nemesis bird” in birding? What is a “big year” in birding?

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United States North America Birds America 147

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

It feels good to start a post with some truly attractive birds – such as two species of broadbills. If you like cute birds, you will probably like the Black-and-yellow Broadbill. Homework assignment: Is the bird in this video a male or a female? Strangely, there do not seem to be many papers on this species.

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Birds Sri Lanka Taiwan Cats 226

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 24, 2018

Birds can be enjoyed in a wide variety of ways. Those of us who chase rare birds for our counties, states, or other human-made geographical distinctions watch birds for more reasons than the twitch. Personally, I enjoy birds in every way. After a bird rich morning at Cope’s.

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Costa Rica Species San Jose Birds 194

10,000 Birds

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

And if you take this phrase, “stamps in weathered passports,” my interpretation is that the experiences from travel are the “stamps” as sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, on your “passport,” or soul. Hannah overlooking a valley Traveling into Lesotho from the Sani Pass is an experience more than just the journey to the top.

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Lesotho Sheep South Africa Africa 235

10,000 Birds

NOVEMBER 22, 2021

A mundane weekend makes for mundane birds, so I had to settle for watching House Sparrows chew through my feeders. Plenty of other species stopped by, of course, but they were sorely outnumbered. So sad, in fact, that Corey decided to honor that pigeon’s memory by making it his Best Bird of the Weekend. How about you?

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Soreing Turkey Falcons Birds 215

10,000 Birds

DECEMBER 20, 2020

We’ve entered that most wonderful time of the year… that’s right, it’s Christmas Bird Count season! After dipping twice on the errant Black-legged Kittiwake that’s been this week’s bird de jour in Rochester, I’ll designate Red-throated Loon my best of a beautiful but unsurprising bunch of birds.

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2020 United States Birds Experience 262

10,000 Birds

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Actually, many birds started their seasonal peregrination weeks ago and may have many more weeks ahead until they’ve reached their destinations. Migration is meaningful to those of us who appreciate when non-local birds invade our local airspace, so make the most of this one. What was your best bird of the weekend?

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Breeders Birds Owls Experience 234